Thursday, December 8, 2016

So Valiant, huh? Apparently that’s a comics line. I’ll start
by proclaiming my stupidity, which I come by honestly. By the early ‘90’s I’d
stopped buying comics, maybe a year or two before Image launched. I missed the
entirely of the ‘90’s- over-the-top character designs, pouches, collectors
editions, variant covers, 53 different X-books, and finally the bubble and collapse.

I only returned and learned what was happening in the Big Two in the early ‘00s.
I bought some comics, not many, and filled in my knowledge with blogs and
choice collections (Starman for
example).

So I hadn’t really realized there’d been an original Valiant
comics when I saw people talking about the new Valiant Universe line. It really
only popped up on my radar when the Wait,
What podcast mentioned it. Then the Valiant
Universe RPG came out. As I’ve documented I love superhero rpgs. I took a
look at the quickstart, but my brain failed me. I didn’t know the characters,
so I had nothing to grab onto. When core book landed, I kept my eye on the Valiant Universe RPG. But other games
floated to the top of my buy list.

Then we got a new and exciting Bundle of Holding. It
contains several pieces of the Valiant Universe RPG plus a host of starter
comic collections for the line. I’ve just gone through all of this, so I’ll
give my initial impressions from a place of ignorance about the universe. This
isn’t a review- more an overview and description to inform your decision.

RPG-SIDE

The Bundle comes with four rpg items: Valiant Universe RPG Comic Book Play Guide, Valiant Universe RPG Quick Start Rules, Valiant Universe: The Roleplaying Game, and Valiant Universe RPG: Transcendent's Edge. The first two are free
products while the last one’s a campaign module.

You can find several different flavors of the VURPGQS on
DriveThru, each with a different character focus and sample adventure. It looks
like those feature different stories than those in the core book, so that
nicely extends things. The Comic-Book
Play Guide is very well done- we’ve seen other superhero rpgs do this
before, but nothing on this scale. It’s worth reading through. The designers
have done a good job of showcasing main and corner case rules there.

CORE BOOK

Right away you’ll notice the nice graphic design. It’s clean
and open, making good use of the Valiant artwork. I liked MWP’s Marvel Heroic, but the design could be a
little dark. This avoids that problem. You’ll also see we start with the
characters and organizations of the universe. Each gets a couple of pages of
backstory. These write-ups avoid mechanics, only offering some tags/cues (which
I’ll come back to). The game’s focus firmly stays on the Valiant Universe and it’s
a good sourcebook if you’re interested in that. Despite that, it does include
mechanics for making your own character.

The main body of the rules run from pages 42 to 59, and that
includes some discussion of comic arcs and stories. It’s amazingly tight.
Character creation’s only nine pages. So what’s the system like?

It uses variable dice for the stats ala Savage Worlds (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12). It does the same with powers
ala Marvel Heroic. It also reminds me
of MHRPG with its broad treatment of power effects, but doesn’t do the same
kind of pool building. Powers provide a fiction, and some can have mechanical
effect (on armor). So it’s a little like Worlds
in Peril. It does allow for some mechanic effect specifics (dice replacement,
die keeping, increasing armor, etc).

Generally players roll their stat die for challenges. They
can roll a relevant power die, but then drop the lower result. They add
modifiers to that result and compare it to a d20 roll by the Lead Narrator (the
GM). Modifiers are open-ended and an arbitrary LN choice. There’s one
exception: if the player rolls the same number as their Luck stat, they
automatically succeed. In combat, the LN’s d20 challenge die is replaced by the
appropriate dice of their foe.

Everything has Cues from PCs to the villains to the story
itself. These are quick descriptors (one or two words). They’re much tighter
than Fate’s aspects. They don’t seem to have a mechanical effect, instead
acting as prompts. Character “dispositions” are more like aspects, though again
no apparent mechanical effect. Tags are like dispositions, I think, but it’s
unclear what they do. I think they’re just color. Everything seems coded to
offer players hooks for their scenes.

Valiant Universe
also has a Plot Point system. PCs earn them for good narrations. Like Marvel Heroic, the Lead Narrator also
earns PPs. When players spend one, the LN gains it. You can use PP’s make a
change to the game. Any change. It’s hugely broad. Oddly it’s mentioned (and
the play examples show) players can spend PP’s to create negative changes for
themselves. But there’s no mechanical incentive to do so. The system focuses on
story over detailed resolution or mechanics.

THE TWIST

Here’s Valiant
Universe’s big hook, though. Scenes are divided, as you’d expect, into
turns. The Lead Narrator describes the situation/problem and the players take a
“narration” of their action. When everyone’s done that, a new turn begins until
the scene’s completed. So far, so good. Here’s the interesting tech:

“The LN starts a Scene and is the LN for every turn until a
Scene is accomplished. Once a Scene is finished, the player to the right of the
current LN becomes the new LN. The new LN starts the first turn of the new
Scene by providing a narrative of the current situation, and so on, as
described above.”

The LN also has a character, so they always get to play.

It’s wild concept, making this really a story game (at least
in my head). I can see it working with the way they’ve got the adventures
structured: a series of event briefs written out which have to be solved. If
there’s a drawback, it’s that these run on railroad tracks. How you solve a
problem remains open, but you’re always starting the next scene with X events
established. On the other hand running without an established would be more
challenging and require more negotiation for a game. The rules talk about the “Yes,
and…” of improve and it’s going to require a lot of that. But there’s little
discussion of how to build those stories.

The rest of the book contains full-write ups for 36 characters
from the comics, plus abbreviated notes for 48 secondary characters and mooks.
Finally there are Event Briefs (adventures), built for particular characters or
teams. You could use these with your own PCs with some adaptation. There’s also
a longer campaign linked adventure at the back.

THE COMICS

The highest level of the Bundle contains ten comic
collections- the first four issues of different series. I expect more will be
added. Given my absolute naiveté about the line, I’ve gone through each
collection and read the first issue. Here are my impressions. I’ve ranked them
from least excited to most interested:

Harbinger V1: Omega Rising: There’s a post this week from TV
showrunners talking about rape as characterdevelopment. That came back to be as the main character of this book mind-controlled
a woman and made her have sex with him. It’s treated as an overuse of his
powers and a “bad thing,” but more a misstep than a violent crime. The Valiant Universe Handbook puts it this
way, (the rape victim) “despite distrusting him for previously using his
abilities to manipulate her,” ends up helping him develop his powers later in
the series. Yick.

Quantum and Woody V1:The World's Worst Superhero Team: I
don’t mind the idea of bad superheroes. But that has to carefully balance
like/dislike. I like the relationship between the two main characters even as I
actually dislike the two main characters. But this first issue takes a long
time to get to the point. It starts in medias res, but isn’t particularly
grabbing. The flashback to how we got there lacks a real payoff.

Ninjak V1: Weaponeer: This has some cool stuff and the initial
mission especially has some cinematic moments. But it suffers from too much
telling us why someone is cool. David Mamet’s “Memo to the Writers of The Unit” points out how lousy this two
people talking about a third trope is. I like Ninjak’s supertech-thief concept,
but he’s such a lazy adolescent white male power fantasy…maybe? I’m not sure.
He bugs me.

X-O Manowar V1: By the Sword: I think X-O Manowar’s the Valiant
character I’d heard of most. I still didn’t know who or what he was when I went
to read this. He certainly isn’t what I expected. We don’t get all that far in
this first issue, but I’m genuinely curious about where the story’s going.

Unity V1: To Kill a King: This book takes place significantly
later in the Valiant timeline. I’d recommend reading it next to last (just
before Ivar). I like the framing and
the set up. The idea of a team versus another major character (with his own
comic) works for me. The one wrong note is the book’s set up a bunch of
characters to kill off for drama. At first I thought the writer had decided to slaughter
them off-page, which was striking and a cool reversal of expectations. But then
we got a couple pages of gruesome deaths to showcase how badass the opposition
is.

Shadowman V1: Birth Rites: I dig supernatural superheroes, but
I’m always wary. Sometimes magic’s done just like any other power. I don’t get
that feeling here. The first issue provides an interesting story, but sets up
many mysteries I want solved. I don’t know why, but I like that the main
character’s a jack-of-all conventional trades, having gone from job to job.

Ivar, Timewalker V1: Making History: Time travel’s hard, but
this book works decently. The cover blurb makes Ivar seem like a wise-cracking
rogue, which he isn’t exactly. In fact the other main character, scientist
Neela Sethi, is more flippant and fun. It has lots of sly references to other
Valiant books, so I recommend reading it last. It has a solid twist that made
me want to read more.

Bloodshot V1: Setting the World on Fire: I like conspiracies in superhero comics. Bloodshot's conventional, but I dig his design. I'm curious about where this story will go. It's more interesting than Wildstorm's Deathblow, a similar mind-controlled merc.

The Valiant V1: Team book! I like superteams and the set-up
here is unique and cool. It establishes some serious stakes and makes me worry
about the outcome. I also want to see how these characters actually work
together. Good read.

Archer & Armstrong Volume 1: The Michelangelo Code: There’s
an interesting mix in the Valiant line of serious (Harbinger, To Kill a King) and funny (Quantum & Woody, Ivar). Archer
& Armstrong’s the most explicitly comedic. I didn’t dig it at first,
but it grew on me. By the end I liked the characters and wanted to see where it
went. Has some pretty good comic-booky jokes, in particular the Cult of Mammon.

Rai V1: Welcome to New Japan: Wow. This came out of left field.
It’s very different from the rest of the line, set in the far future. The world-building’s
excellent. Rai dashes off ideas and
keeps moving at hyper-speed. I want to know the answers to the many questions
it poses.

I’ll finish reading all the collections (except Harbinger). I’ll probably pick up more
of those last three books, definitely more of Rai. Overall I’m pleased with the comics. They’re more than worth
the price of the bundle and give a decent sense of the Valiant Universe as a
whole. I do wish we’d gotten a Faith collection,
but based on the strength of these I’ll pick that up on my own.

There’s also The Valiant
Universe Handbook 2016 #1 included. It echoes the classic Marvel Universe
Handbooks. It’s a good resource for the rpg. I wouldn’t read it until after you’ve
finished reading the collections.

OVERALL

If you like superhero comics, it’s worth picking up this
collection-- especially if you haven’t checked out Valiant. If you’re a superhero
rpg fan, it’s also worth getting. The rpg itself offers a massively loose,
improv-heavy, superhero story game. It’s unlike anything out there- more open
than Marvel Heroic or classic Marvel Superheroes. But even if that approach isn’t
your bag, VURPG has a ton of good resources and ideas. There’s even a large
campaign module I didn’t even cover above. Going through everything I spotted
plot point and character material I’m stealing for my Mutants & Masterminds campaign. That makes it worth my time.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

If I’m feeling especially brave I try to do an assessment of
genre trends with these lists. But 2015 proves strikingly resistant to that.
Sure we had several zombie games, but it didn’t feel like a shovelware flood.
We had some strong small press or indie titles (Ten Candles, Urban Shadows,
Witch). But we also had some veterans return (Chill, Apocalypse Prevention,
Inc). We even had FFG dip its toes into the horror rpg waters (The End of the
World series). There’s a ton of good stuff, but nothing that I can point to and
go “That was the year of X.”

But even when I go to my default horror barometer, horror
films, I don’t see a trend. We had big studio horror (Crimson Peaks,
Poltergist, The Visit); comedy horror (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse,
Final Girls), found-footage (Vatican Tapes, Paranormal Activity: Ghost
Dimension), sequels (Sinister 2, Insidious: Chapter 3), anthologies (Christmas
Horror Story, Tales of Halloween). But a stand-out film? I’m not sure. Perhaps The Witch, and even that seemed to split
reviewers as to how strong it was. Even television seems to have managed to
cater to a variety of horror tastes (Scream Queens, The Strain, American Horror
Story, Penny Dreadful).

For this list I’ve focused on major releases, arbitrarily
determined. I’ve usually added it if it has a hard-copy version. I’ve judged
pdfs on size and utility. For the list items I include core rules, significant
sourcebooks, and large campaigns. I’ve split this list into two parts, at the
end of the second part you’ll find grouped entries for some other sourcebooks
and modules. You’ll also notice an absence of Cthulhu horror on this list-
those will get their own post. If you see something major from 2015 I’ve missed
in this half of the alphabet, give me a heads up.

Outbreak: Undead moves back to classic zombies from the
company's foray into generic sci-fi horror (Outbreak: Space). If you’ve
read the first half of the list, you’ll note this is the third game using cards.
These aren't integral to play and come in three flavors: encounters, character trait,
and injury reference cards. The encounter cards also include survivors so you can
pick one of those and play right away. Optionally you can take an online quiz, the
“SPEW AI,” and generate a version of yourself It focuses on the survivor and survival
side of things. You need to track your resources and handle encumbrance. In this
regard it leans more to the Walking Dead
side: life in the aftermath. OB:UD doesn't focus on backstory, instead it assumes
you have that in mind. ("Zombies are here. What's next?"). It uses abilities
and skills to form dice pools. While Outbreak:
Undead looks simple, there's an array graphic icons and color coding in the
rules, as well as the use of d5's.

I didn't like the messy, collage-filled graphic approach of OB:UD
first edition, but this new version cleans that up. The 2e pocket edition is much
easier to read. While you can't turn off the layers in the pdf, the page backgrounds
aren't too intrusive. Overall it feels like a much stronger game with significant
changes to the mechanics.

An Italian horror rpg which translates as "Toyland."
It's written by the designers of Sine Requie:
Anno XIII, a weird World War II zombie horror game. In fact this seems to be
a weird creepy doll side setting within that world. Here's the loosely translated
blurb: "On June 6, 1944, the world sank into the darkest of hells. On Judgment
Day the Dead began hunting mankind ... but in another place, where imagination reigns,
those who are puppets in the world dominated by Dead, live their lives and their
adventures. Here you will find heroic knights, bears with funny hats on his head,
powerful witches and graceful ladies with their parasols of lace."

RPGGeek lists it as zombie horror. But it looks more like a kids'
perspective horror game- like Grimm or
Monsters & Other Childish Things.

GURPS may have ruined us for generic system names. P.E.R.K. (written
with all those periods throughout) stands for "Pretty Easy Roleplaying Kit."
It's a universal corebook released with their urban horror setting as the
default. P.E.R.K.’s a dice pool game with options for tactical tracking. So far
they've only released these two books plus a microsetting: Hollywood Ninja. Oddly you can't buy the UH book separately right now
on DriveThru, you can only get it in a bundle with the core book.

PERK Urban Horror follows
the Monster PC path ala World of Darkness. It has a mature content warning on the
back, a blurb, and some goth poetry. There's about eight pages of setting material,
with the rest being mechanical material (perks, skills, gear, abilities), GM advice
(six pages), and antagonists (16 pages). While it wears a sense of WoD on its sleeve,
it doesn't reference those in its inspirations section.

So apparently there's a long-running comic called Phineus:
Magician for Hire. Currently it's a webcomic, though the header says the company's
been providing "Pittsburgh's Best Paranormal Comics" for 25 years. This
game's written by the creator. Originally titled Backwaters of Mysticism (2010), this new edition increases the size
fourfold. There's a nice quote from the author on his website, "Ironically
John and my own RPG doesn’t have a world. We created it so that it would fit into
any world you wanted it to...Many of my Phineus stories came from those games. Rugnar
and Maynard are both characters I played in Backwaters.
The Kali Saga was based on a campaign run by John, in which I played Brother Maynard.
And yes, he did get squished in that one, too."

The game itself is OGL based (or as the book says "Requires
the use of a Roleplaying Game Core Book published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.")
Oddly DriveThru lists it as using BRP from Chaosium. The rules themselves feel very
rough, like a home campaign resource document assembled for players. There’s no
table of contents, it jumps in without ref to the source rules, and has no page
numbers. Phineus assumes a good deal of
gaming knowledge. The layout's pretty basic a bar boxing in the single-column text
and a greyscale background.

A new edition of Rippers,
revised for Savage Worlds: Reloaded. The
highly successful Kickstarter allowed them several additional releases. I've reviewed
the original Rippers and summed that up this way: "A solid and unique
take on Victoriana horror, Rippers manages
to smartly combine the Gothic horror tradition with the trappings and worries of
steampunk. Here science offers new ways to combat the darkness facing the world,
but at a horrible cost to mind and body. Biotech and implants of a cyberpunk style
game become limbs and organs harvested from monsters and implanted into hunters.
The whole thing is well developed and presented. It has some material on the Victorian
world, but mostly sets up the campaign ideas and concepts."

The new edition keeps that up, but with a new look, new art,
and a more graphically intense page design (I hope you can turn off layers...).
It looks very cool. It makes me both regret not backing the KS and not digging Savage Worlds more. The main material's broken
into a Player's Guide and Game Master's Handbook. They've released
several supplements: Frightful Expeditions
(more on the setting), Lord of the Underworld
(module), and various pdf incidental pieces. You can also buy a bundle of original
Rippers for a quite nice price.

A sci-fi horror rpg, Shadows
Over Sol embraces both the old and the new in theming and design. On the one
hand we have issues of transhumanism, networking, and constructed cultures on the
table. On the other we have a dense thirteen pages of setting history as a
roadblock for new players. Shadows Over Sol
threw me off right away. The introduction seems to set up a very specific and
concrete backdrop for the game. A colony ship travelling from Mars to Ceres has
problems. The crew’s divided politically and fighting breaks out. That failed mutiny
damages the ship, but it limps to its destination. But it finds only dead comms
at the landing site. The survivors stagger out into an empty station, perhaps
to discover alien horrors lurking there.

OK, cool. I like the tight framing. We’re going to be crewmembers
trying to survive and figure out what happened.

But that’s not what we get. Instead the game’s much broader.
We switch gears to grand scale themes of space-faring, discussions of the solar
system history, and a presentation of all the conflicting cultures. It’s a weird
shift. Shadows Over Sol resembles Eclispe Phase, a broad sci-fi game which
can be used to tell horror stories. SoS puts horror on the cover, but it
doesn’t feel like that needs to be the case. It’s a general sci-fi setting and
system. Despite citing notable sci-fi horror sources (The Thing, Europa Report, The Void) , the book only provides a handful
of pages actually addressing how to use the game for those kinds of stories.

Shane Hensley, creator of Deadlands, returns to Wild West horror with his rpg adaptation of the
Oni Press comic, The Sixth Gun. Built
for Savage Worlds, the Kickstarter
pitch stressed the compatibility of this material with Deadlands.

I’d never heard of The
Sixth Gun series. If you haven’t either, here’s the wikipedia synopsis, “The Sixth Gun takes place in the old west,
shortly after the end of the Civil War. The story centers around a set of six pistols,
each imbued with dark powers. The wielder of each pistol gains an ability unique
to that weapon, and is tied to the pistol until his or her death.” The comic
itself ran fifty issues, supplemented by a bunch of spin-off mini-series.
Clocking in at about a hundred pages, The
Sixth Gun rpg offers new edges, hindrances, artifacts, and optional rules.
We’ve seen some licensed rpgs lean into the mechanics and others acting more as
sourcebooks. The Sixth Gun falls
somewhere in the middle.

Originally I'd placed this on my forthcoming "Year in Cthulhu"
list. But when I referenced it in an online conversation, someone corrected me.
They said Silent Legions wasn't a Cthulhu
game, but instead literally Lovecraft-esque. A quick read-though of the preview
got me to order a hard copy. As with the other Kevin Crawford rpg I hit this year,
Godbound, Silent Legions hit a sweet spot for me: a toolkit for generating sweeping
rpg adventures, backed up by interesting detail and a fully-fleshed system.

Silent Legions has
several distinct but interlocking parts. It begins with an OSR-style ruleset for
horror investigations. It's clean and simple, offering four classes (Investigator,
Scholar, Socialite, Tough). These rules take up the first couple dozen pages. That
even includes tight equipment lists, encumbrance, and madness systems. Crawford's
distilled down what you need to play at this level of detail. As a plus, the OSR's
tissue-paper characters fit here, overmatched by the horrors they face.

After the basic rules, we get a classic PC-destructive magic
and psychics system. Here Silent Legions
unveils its big trick: plentiful resources to help GMs tune those elements. The
"Creating Dark Sorcery" section has random tables to create mind-blasting
arcana. It's useful for any modern supernatural investigation game.

The same holds true for the tools on offer in the rest of the
book. In the chapter on Creating Your Mythos, you build your cosmic horror-- from
elder gods to alien races to cults. You can generate something echoing Lovecraft
but unfamiliar to the player and characters. The tables hold together. I've seen
table books that lack coherency. Crawford connects the material and offers rich
examples for each section. You see the same skill in the Building Your World, Cults,
and Bestiary sections.

The book's capped with a GM grab-bag optional rules and re-frames.
That includes my favorite: “Luchadores Against Cthulhu.” It also has notes on Freemasonry,
a tables for secret adepts, school settings, and more. It discusses how to use Silent
Legions with other games. If you like OSR then this game will work for you.
But even if you don't it's worth picking up. Anyone running Call of Cthulhu, Fear Itself, Hunter, Monster of the Week, or similar games will
find useful resources here. Highly recommended.

The world's ending. You're survivors trying to eke out a last
few minutes, hours, days. You're going to fail. Your candle will be snuffed out.
That’s the game.

Yikes may be the understatement of the blog.

What kinds of horror can you evoke at the table? Dread, as in
the eponymous Dread with its terrible
anticipation at the table? Cosmic horror, perhaps? A nihilistic reaction to things
more massive and uncaring? Shock horror done with blood and gut?. Its sibling body
horror or revulsion ? Jump Scares? Perhaps even the subtle horror of the uncanny
as seen in some fantastic stories?

And then there's Ten
Candles’ existential horror. You're not monsters dealing with your inhumanity.
You're people. I don't know if I could handle this game. I don't know what kind
of bleed I'd have, especially given the current climate.

A horror/slasher film-esque rpg; it’s generic but with a particular
gory tone. Trick or Treat has a basic
layout and look, complete with blood splatter page elements (at the top and bottom,
not under the text...mostly). It opens with game fiction you have to wade
through. The system’s percentile-based using skill and point buy. The blurb touts
quick character generation as a feature. Sometimes I let a game’s ad copy do
the tlaking, "While watching a horror movie it occurs to some that they could
do better. Trick or treat is the game that puts you in that seat and gives you the
chance to live up to those words. Can you really make better decisions or is it
all talk? Can you play the ROLE and still trick the classic monsters or will you
become their treat?" Publisher Trooper X has released a couple of other rpgs: Space Cadet Alpha, Ancient Steel, and Ancient Steel Horror. If you know one of those, you may have better
insight into this game.

While we had a horde of zombies on the first half of this list,
only this one shambles into view here. TROPES is intended to be a new basic system,
and it launches with this Z-themed product. It's a light, d6-driven game. Characters
have three stats (muscle, agility, wits), a background/ profession, and a descriptive
sentence. A character's background gives a die bonus for related tasks. Those mechanics
only take up the first 16 pages. It's pretty conventional, though I like the concept
of exceptional rolls giving you the equivalent of fate points. TROPES: ZE does
have good simple toolkit for building an outbreak. That's a decent resource and
I'd like to see more of that. That's followed by NPCs, some zombie listings, and
inspirational sources. TROPES: Zombies
offers a quick, simple zombie game. If you like Z-horror and want something you
can get to the table quickly, it fits. If you're curious about it, there's an artless
PWYW version available. Small Niche Games has also released a companion and a scenario.

My work's vanilla, so I rarely get angry commentators. One of
the few objected to my inclusion of Mage:
the Ascension on my Horror rpg lists. They had a point- while Mage existed in the World of Darkness, it
didn't necessarily live in that darkness. My Mage did, but YWODMV. It's one of the problems I hit with horror in
particular. At what point does a "supernatural" game become horror? If
you're of a certain age you've probably seen someone's Vampires as superbeings campaign.
Let's say monsters don't mean horror, then what are they?

Which brings me to Urban
Shadows: Political Urban Fantasy. Is it horror? Well, YUSMV. I first heard it
pitched as “World of Darkness done with PbtA.” And they're right, but a very particular
kind of WoD. There beings of multiple fantastic origins struggle for control, authority,
or survival in a dark city. Urban Shadows
does that campaign well. Everything supports that. Debts and relationships create
network between players. The urban backdrop emerges through play. A vast and spidery
web of NPCs expands session after session. It clicks. Even in the one shot I played
it worked and felt compelling.

Each player chooses a playbook belonging to one of the four factions
(Mortality, Night, Power, and Wild). You have several choices within each one (Hunter,
Wolf, Oracle, Fae). Character creation involves defining a circle and develop an
agenda. While the players connect, they're not on the same side. Call in debt from
a fellow PC and they might use that to shiv you. The PvP's strong here, something
many PbtA games steer away from. But you don't necessarily want to destroy your
fellow PCs. You only advance by interacting with each of the factions, and they’re
often your access to those worlds.

Urban Shadows has some
horror trappings: the monstrous nature of the players, the kinds of threats facing
the city, and most importantly the slow spiral into corruption. It shares WoD’s
focus on personal horror. It comes from overstepping the bounds you've set for yourself.
Urban Shadows delivers those opportunities
to fall. It's a good game and worth picking up for anyone who digs urban fantasy
or horror. Even if PbtA isn't your bag, you may find interesting tools for politics
within other games.

I've seen lots of love-letters to World of Darkness on these
lists. It's always a pleasure when those demonstrate an appreciation for the source,
but then create striking elements & head in new directions. Witch is one of those good rpgs. It stands
solidly on its own, but echoes older games. It’s not imitative, but works in the
same play-space to create a new experience.

In Witch you play a
user of magic. Like Mage: The Awakening
or Ars Magica it focuses on the trials,
tribulations, and development of your character's interaction with the mystic. But
here you gain power by making a deal with a demon. These demons come in many forms,
drawn to different kinds of recipients. The powers they grant vary- giving us archetypes,
called "Fates": Heks, Druid, Djinn, Yokai, Sosye, Lich, and Seer. Each
has access to unique spells and (in a nice touch) have variations on the basic talents.
Characters can develop more powerful spells and rituals. But of course all of this
has a cost. Using and pushing your magic can eventually drive you over the edge.
Such failures give rise to horrible results in the real world, terrors reaching
well beyond the witch.

I dig Witch. It has
a clean design and I love the Fate illustrations. It offers solid world and support
material for GMs (interesting artifacts, cool adversaries, additional options).
I also like that it works with a simple 2d10+Stat+Skill vs. target, rather than
a dice pool. That makes it easier to deal with the complexities of the magic system.
Witch is worth picking up if you like
modern fantasy/horror. Designer Elizabeth Chiapraditkul has also released a companion
Devil's Deck, a lovely tarot-like card collection. These can be used with the rpg,
but they're cool on their own. Chiapraditkul is listed as designer, developer,
and layout person. It’s an amazing product, more so for having been done by one
person.

28. Miscellaneous: Modules

I’m not going to detail every horror module released. Instead
I’ve cherry-picked a few longer and more significant releases.

Kuro Tensei:
The final volume in the Kuro rpg
saga. Moves the meta-plot forward, adds new locales, expands PC powers, and
wraps things up. Features neo-Japanese occult scenarios to play all that out.

No Soul Left Behind: A massive
campaign for the Better Angels
demonic superbeings rpg. It follows the goings on in a parahuman academy. NSLB is
deeply embedded in the setting, making hard to adapt for other games. A fun
read.

Portsmouth 1745: A full campaign for Colonial Gothic set in Portsmouth. Has new rules and connected
adventures for PCs of all levels.

Savage Tales of Horror: The year saw three volumes of these scenario
collections for Savage Worlds. Some
adventures focus on particular SW flavors like Solomon Kane, Deadlands Noir, or The Last Parsec.

Stone and a Hard Place: Both a sourcebook and a plot point campaign
for Deadlands. Details new foes,
critters, and locales of the Southwest. Includes new character options.

29. Miscellaneous: Sourcebooks

As with modules, I’m not hitting everything. But the
supplements here expand rules, settings, or challenges. Some include adventures
and could fit on the entry above.

Dark Osprey series: Osprey’s
specialized guidebook line series details different horror settings. While they
include no rules, you get a ton of background materials and ideas. The 2015
releases are: Werewolves: A Hunter’s
Guide; The Wars of Atlantis; The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow; Bug Hunts: Surviving and Combating the Alien
Menace; and War of the Worlds: The
Anglo-Martian War of 1895.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Sherri and I bought a Wii U in mid-September. We picked it
up primarily for two games: the aforementioned Xenoblade and Tokyo Mirage Sessions.
That’s not something we do for a console. We usually wait for a critical mass
of games we want to play. But the Wii U catalog isn’t getting any stronger. I
can only think of 4-5 other games on the system I’d even want to pick up. As
well Nintendo just announced the end of Wii U production and the development of
the “Switch.”

But we’ve already gotten our money’s worth out of the Wii U.

As of today I’ve played 269 hours of Xenoblade. Sherri’s played 378.

It hits our sweet spot and I’m not entirely sure why. We
like JRPGs, though we prefer turn based combat. Still we dug FF XII & XIII,
Star Ocean, and Dragon Quest Heroes, all twitchy games. But many others we’ve hated
(Resonance of Fate, Rogue Galaxy). Today
I’m going to boil down ten things I like about Xenoblade Chronicles X.

But first some backstory.

The original Xenoblade
Chronicles came out for the Wii late in its life cycle. A fan campaign barely
managed to get a US release. Sherri and I played a ton of XenobladeChronicles (I’ll
call it XB1 from this point on). It had a decent active-time combat engine and
(for the most part) interesting characters. But XB1’s set up and presentation
sold it. It had massive zones, giving a better sense of space and scale than any
other rpg I’ve played. It has to because your characters lived on the surface
of a colossal warrior statue- one of a pair. These titans had frozen, locked in
battle. To cross from one to the other you journeyed across their clashing
swords. XB1 remains a dynamite game and probably the second best rpg on the Wii
(after Rune Factory Frontier). Later
Nintendo would do a version for the “advanced” 3DS, but I haven’t tried that.

Xenoblade Chronicles X
(yes, they could have made a better title split) doesn’t seem to have anything
to do with the original. That’s as far as I can see many, many hours in. Instead
we’re clearly in our universe. Warring alien races destroy the Earth at the
start, though why remains uncertain. Several colony ships escape just before
the end. Aliens attack our ship, The White Whale, another solar system, shattering
the vessel. The pieces crash across a world called Mira. Gameplay begins with
our rescue from a stasis pod. We’re brought back to the single human
settlement, New LA, developed in the months we’ve been on ice. From there we
explore the world, fight monsters, do missions, develop new equipment, and
uncover the secrets of this world and the original conflict which destroyed
Earth.

It plays a little like an MMO. There’s a continuous
landscape of several enormous zones. Xenoblade
Chronicles X only loads when you fast travel across the map. In combat you
have a default auto-attack and cycle through various arts to activate special
attacks. It’s fast and chaotic, but gets manageable quickly. The AI controls your
team of three additional characters, but you can tune their loadout and special
actions. There’s a ton to do, but the emphasis is on exploration.

The Bad and the Good

(I’m limiting myself
to eleven each)

BAD This space
colony project clearly had terrible vetting. Many of your fellow human
survivors (a limited pool) turn out to be assholes. They’re venal, greedy, and
xenophobic in the face of humanity’s extinction. And they’re really dumb at
times. The game needs to have human adversaries, I get that. But the side
missions fall back on this trope way too much.

GOOD I love
exploring environments. That’s my favorite part of every MMO (Final Fantasy XI, Everquest, Secret World).
In particular I loved just flying around City
of Heroes to see what the designers had created. This is even better. Each
of the major zones has a distinct feeling: different colors, textures, weather,
monsters, verticality, pathing. And there’s always more to find. This morning,
269 hours in, I dropped down into a place I’d never seen before and nearly got
my ass handed to me.

BAD You can dress
your characters. But there are many super cheesecake-y female outfits/armor.
They have male flesh-baring clothing, but they’re not nearly equivalent (especially
in the pants department). It can get annoying. In a similar vein a couple of
the alien races fall into lazy design tropes (bulky, brute, armored males vs. svelte
sexy, scantily-clad females).

GOOD But you have
a ton of armor and costume choices throughout the game. And I mean a ton.
Some are color swaps, but even they have minor differences to distinguish them.
More importantly you can set your “Fashion Gear,” meaning your pick of visible
armor. That lets you play paperdoll to your heart’s content. I love switching
around outfits for my team from time to time, especially after I uncover a new
unique suit.

BAD There’s no
sort function for any of the inventory lists (collected items, weapons, armor).
In some cases you can filter. But that only helps a little. You’ll spend time finding
things within sub-menus. This is probably a translation artifact. As with other
JRPGs items appear on the list as they did in the original language.

GOODXenoblade Chronicles X fixes several of
the problems of the first Xenoblade. You
have more control in combat. You can train in different weapons sets, switching
them between fights if you want. The creation system makes sense here as
opposed to earlier random alchemy. The environments feel more full and diverse.
The annoying Nopon race from the first game reappears here, but they’re more
interesting and palatable.

BAD Though it
didn’t bother me, some critics didn’t like how long it takes to get a battle-mech
of your own (called Skells here). You’ll be well past the halfway mark before
you do. Even then you have to wait another chapter or two before they develop
flight technology.

GOOD When you
finally get your Skell, it’s awesome. It controls very differently and takes
some getting used to. By that time you’ve gotten down all the base character systems.
Piloting a Skell introduces a host of new mechanics: new weapons, add-ons, fighting
combos, tactics. It feels awesome when you can go out in your mech and beat up the
monsters that crushed you in the past. There’s a parallel feeling of hubris
when you discover Skells can’t solve every problem. More than anything since
you’ve explored on foot for so long, being able to jump higher and eventually
fly recharges the landscape. You get to explore again and uncover new secrets.

BAD Boy this game
is white. You can change your own character’s skin tone and set up whatever
ethnic identity you like. But most of your seventeen possible party members are
white. Two are definitely Asian, one might be, and only one has darker skin.
The same holds true in the human population within the New LA Colony: you see
few definite persons of color.

GOOD I love the
monster designs in this game. Of course you get the palette swaps with some species
but more often than not, you’ll spot new details across beasts in different
regions. I love watching Sherri play because I can actually see these foes.
Yesterday I noticed that one species of Lictor, a big insect creature, had unique
armor plating. I could see rune-like engravings on its plates. This game has
many moments like that. I haven’t even touched on how well animated the
monsters are. All have striking, animal-like movements.

BAD There’s a
limited ‘palett’e to the characters you can add to your party. Let me rephrase
that. Of the seventeen characters you can add, six feel interchangeable (either
milquetoast or slightly douche-y males). The female characters fare better. Despite
that you still have many great characters with interesting stories to choose
from. But it’s disappointing that they don’t feel unique or possesses more than
a basic characterization (know-it-all,
drinker, airhead).

GOOD That being
said I dig some of the richer characters and their stories. I want to know more
about Alexa, Murderess, Elma, Nagi, and L when I play them. Murderess, in
particular, is a terrible human being who stands in stark contrast to the others.
It’s great to hear her interact with the more ethical party members.

BAD There’s
little in the way of DLC. I would drop money for new things: armor, areas,
missions, characters, monsters.

GOOD You have
seventeen recruitable characters. They have different conversations among
themselves depending on your team composition. We’ve seen that in other games,
but I don’t recall there being this many. Some of the interactions are awesome
and revealing.

BAD If you’re a playing
a woman, some weird after-combat dialogue that pops up from time to time. In particular
talking about problems with your hair. Some the female characters talk about
shopping. If you’re doing a lot of battle grinding, you’ll notice it. It’s so
weird and discordant with other stuff that I wonder if it’s an artifact of the
original or something that popped up with the localization.

GOOD I love the
way Xenoblade Chronicles X handles
online stuff. And I hate console online gaming. You can go light with it, just
getting some new tasks and bonuses or heavy and actually go on missions with
other players. I haven’t done the latter, but it doesn’t feel like I’m missing
out on something vital.

BAD “Here’s your
weapons. There you go.” This game throws you in. There’s no real tutorial.
Systems aren’t explained, you just have to figure them out. When they do
finally mention something (“Hey, there’s a Collectopedia!”) that’s 20+ hours
after you’ve discovered it for yourself. Arts & Skills, key combat
elements, Overdrive, that there’s no falling damage, etc. aren’t explained. You
have to dig down to figure out that out. Potential’s a listed stat…what does
that mean?

GOOD At the same
time I kind of love that. I dig figuring out things here- and that’s not
normally my bag. I love having to go to the manual. I even love hunting around
on forums to get insight. There’s a real pleasure when you get something to
work. Like that moment when you spot signs about of a monster’s susceptibility
to a particular damage type-- important because the game has six of them
(Physical, Thermal, Ether, Gravity, Electric, Beam…with no explanation). The
system’s opaque, but that doesn’t hurt it.

BADXenoblade
Chronicles X has hundreds of side missions: from basic gathering, to bounty
hunts, to city-changing assignments. You meet many, many quest givers. But one
is presented as stereotypically gay: mincing, making suggestive comments,
wearing make-up. It’s clearly presented to make the NPC seem odd and weird.
That’s an off note and something we don’t see anywhere else in the game.

GOOD Combat
remains challenging for a long time. Eventually you’ll be over-leveled, but
that’s a ways in. You might smash through some monsters if you’ve tuned your
weapons and armor right. But then you hit another creature that doesn’t work with
and have to start again. If you’re like me, eventually you’ll get complacent.
You’ll see a group of bug and jump in, only to have them agro a horde of other insects.
Then Phogg dies, then Hope dies, and suddenly you’re away running as fast as
you can …

BAD The Earth has
been destroyed and New LA is the last holdout of humanity. We have a
population, I’m guessing, of a few thousand. They live in a hostile
environment, beset by alien foes, with a pseudo-military leadership. Yet Capitalism
remains the driving force. Humanity immediately builds a “commercial district” with
shops, colonists worry about their finances, and you see class distinctions. As
well, all the friendly alien races are capitalists. It’s odd and actually
becomes laughable in a couple of spots. Again, a minor note but a strange
backdrop.

GOODXenoblade Chronicles X is an open-world
game. Within zones animals of vastly different levels wander next to one-another.
There’s no “this is the newbie area.” You’re forced to plan and move carefully.
If you’re smart you can get by truly dangerous creatures. That allows you to unlock
riches or die quickly. This open-world approach means that the story’s loose.
You have distinct chapter missions you pick to move the story forward. That’s
complemented by several dozen normal and affinity missions deepening the world
and adding new elements. But the through-line of the story can be hard to
follow and you may find yourself just wandering. That’s the risk of a sprawling
game like this. Despite that, Xenoblade Chronicles
X has gotten me a couple of times. It’s had some twists I didn’t see coming
and at least one revelation that completely changed earlier events for me.